


Dance With Her Ghost

by Draco_sollicitus



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post Season 8 Episode 3, Separation, gendry POV, heavy on the hurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 15:39:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: Gendry Waters tries to find Arya Stark after the Battle of Winterfell by retracing her steps.Davos doesn't know where she went; Clegane swears the Red Woman spoke to her; but, she's nowhere to be found.Fear consumes him as he's confronted by the death toll: did his lady survive or not?





	Dance With Her Ghost

**Author's Note:**

> Hii!!
> 
> I had so much fun writing my other Gendrya fic that I decided to write a different scenario/reunion in this one.
> 
> This is Gendry's POV, and it's angsty af!
> 
> Rated M for a number of reasons, and here are the specific warnings for the fic:
> 
>  **Warnings**  
>  Mention of/reference to rape (Melisandre / Gendry in s03, reference to her tying him down/the leeches)
> 
> Cursing
> 
> Pervasive Death
> 
> Serious panic/anxiety at the thought of someone being dead

Gendry walks as quickly as he can through the halls of Winterfell; in his arms, he carries a small body, one he prays stays breathing long enough to get help.

“Another one?” The woman running the makeshift hospital looks at him with pursed lips, and Gendry nods, swallowing drily. “There aren’t any beds left.”

“She’s - please, she’s a little girl.” Gendry feels too large to be in this space, too coarse, too rough. The woman looks highbred, perhaps one of the ladies of the North, if her expression and cut of her clothing is any suggestion. “Please.”

The woman sighs and looks over shoulder, to the occupied stretchers and beds, to the source of the moaning and the smell that makes Gendry want to gag, but he can’t because he needs his hands.

“I found her holdin’ a sword,” Gendry mumbles, blinking back tears that he can blame on the acrid smoke that seems to fill the halls still. “She was tryin’ to protect people in the crypt--”

“We can make some room there, at the end,” the woman says, most likely trying to spare the lengthy ramble Gendry’s more than ready to give. “Come on, boy.” She turns and walks in the direction she’d indicated, and Gendry follows, his body aching and feet sore.

He’s brought six people to the infirmary in the last hour. This one’s the smallest. This one will be his last. He’d thought he was already done when he found her, but there she’d been, propped up in the corner, grey-faced and gasping and clammy, and he’d scooped her up without a second thought, unable to turn his back on her, no matter how weary he was, how futile it seemed.

Everyone else who was going to make it has already been brought up here, after all. Gendry’s not stupid; he knows when to stop fighting. But this little girl….

“Set her here.” The woman points at the end of a tattered mattress, where a young man, about Gendry’s age, moans in pain, but soft, like he can’t get any louder. “He’ll be gone soon, anyway.”

Gendry gives the woman a look - it can’t be healthy, talking in front of people like they’re about to die, even if they are going to die - but does as she commands. He takes the small sword he’d found with the girl and lays it at her side; the woman huffs in indignation and goes to grab it, but he stops her, his hand blocking hers in a way he pray won’t get him whipped, her being a lady and all.

“It’s hers,” he mutters, looking up at the woman.

“She won’t need it,” she argues, but Gendry shakes his head.

“It’s her sword,” he repeats. “No one’s taking her sword. She should have it when she wakes up.” Because of course she’ll wake up. Gendry knows she will.  

He stands and bows, hoping that it expresses his gratitude enough, hoping that it’s low enough, but fuck if he ever learned any kind of etiquette besides _grovel_ to the upper class, and walks back the way he came, remembering very well a time when someone tried to take a sword away from a girl against her will.

It almost brings a smile to his face, and Gendry picks up the pace, tiredness forgotten a bit as he lets himself imagine a reunion: he hadn’t thought about her during the initial battle, couldn’t spare a thought besides _don’t die here, not here, not now_ ; but when the first waves had ended, panic had left him, and he’d been left with nothing but fatigue and a sense of overwhelming dread that every second could be his last, Gendry had thought about a sharp chin, and clever eyes, and the voice of a woman who’d fought tooth and nail for him - who’d offered him family when he barely knew the meaning of the word - the voice of a woman who he could learn to love thoroughly, in every way, if given time.

And now, through some miracle, they have time.

When he enters the main courtyard, he spots a familiar face, and he walks into the offered embrace eagerly.

“You made it,” Ser Davos smiles broadly, eyes crinkling, and Gendry ducks his head with a smile of his own. “Thank the gods, boy.”

“I am, and I will,” Gendry answers with a laugh. “Glad to see you made it through as well, old man.”

Ser Davos tuts at him, and Gendry looks over his shoulder without thinking, eyeing the ramparts but not seeing anyone familiar. He looks in the corners behind him, squinting, before returning his gaze to Ser Davos.

The man’s smirking at him a little. “Are you looking for someone, son?”

Gendry quirks his lips up in an approximation of a smile, a heavy feeling in his stomach now that he hasn’t actually spotted her. “A  - a friend. I thought she was out here on the wall, but--” He shrugs. “I don’t know why she’d be sticking around for this long.”

 _She’s a lady, of House Stark,_ he reminds himself. _Legitimate and everything. Why’d she be waiting around for you?_ The reasons he had for rejecting her offer of family years ago still stand in the present, where he wants something entirely different (but maybe not so different, in the end) from her.

“A she?” Ser Davos looks sad for a moment, and Gendry’s throat tightens. “Which lady are you looking for?”

“She’s about this tall,” Gendry sticks a hand out mid-chest level, “And she’s got dark hair, and a smart mouth -- handy with a weapon?” Ser Davos doesn’t look any less worried, so Gendry lets a breath and a secret out. “Arya Stark.”

If Ser Davos is surprised that Gendry would be concerned with Arya Stark’s fate, he doesn’t comment. Instead, he looks mildly relieved.

“Lady Stark? I saw her fighting. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen; she must have killed thirty walkers with a double-bladed weapon.” Gendry glows with pride - _she used his weapon, she’d killed with his weapon, she’d saved her life with his weapon_ \- “But I haven’t seen her since well before dawn.”

“Where did she go?”

Gendry can’t stop himself from squinting into the corners behind Ser Davos; it doesn’t matter if the sun rose almost two hours ago, a darkness that had settled over Winterfell has yet to lift, even in the face of their victory.

“No idea. She ran further inside when we were overrun, and the Hound ran like holy hells after her a few minutes later.” Gendry nods, feeling slightly distant now as he eyes the door that leads into the halls of Winterfell, and he almost misses what Ser Davos says next. “Didn’t think the man cared about anything but himself. Clearly, I was wrong.”

“Thank you,” Gendry remembers to mumble, shuffling his feet now. “I--”

“Go find her,” Davos says with a twinkle in his eye. “Go on. I’ll be here waiting when you get back.”

Gendry turns and walks away, but turns back last second, grinning.

“What is it?” Davos crosses his arms and lifts an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re lookin’ for an encouragement.”

“No,” Gendry shakes his head and laughs, smiling down at the stones below his feet. “I just feel like -- I should be in a boat for this?”

“Did you ever learn how to swim?”

“Fuck no,” Gendry snorts. “You couldn’t pay me to get ten feet near the sea after that.”

They both laugh, warm and real and a little hysterical, and Davos waves him off; Gendry walks inside feeling a little lighter and keeps an eye out for the unmistakable figure of the Hound.

He finds him easily enough, propped up against the wall, his scarred face even more contorted than normal, a dead man at his side. It’s Beric. Gendry can’t even find the energy to feel a glimpse of cheer that the man who sold him and separated him from his family for near-on five godsforsaken years is dead now, but he does have just enough ire left in him to wonder if that man died at the wights’ hands, or the Hound’s.

There’s no sign of Arya yet, so Gendry bites down hard on whatever he really wants to say to the disgraced man in front of him, and instead greets him as calmly as possible.

“Hound.”

Nothing. Gendry rolls his eyes and tries again. “ _Hound._ ”

It’s then that he notices the man’s breathing oddly; panicked, short breaths, eyes staring off into space. Gendry’s no stranger to fear, but it’s strange to see it on the face of one of the men who’s one of the most frightening people in Westeros.

“Sandor Clegane,” he tries, pushing on the man’s shoulder. That gets him to blink and look up. “Where is she?”

He doesn’t have to say who; there’s probably only one _she_ in the world that either of them actively think about.

“She was being chased by wights,” Clegane mutters, going back to staring into space again. “Forty or fifty of ‘em. Fought ‘em off as long as she could, but--”

Cold, sharp and fierce, unlike the bitter wind that cut through Winterfell not six hours ago, cuts through him. _But_ \--

“She couldn’t run forever. Beric and I found her, tried to get her to safety, and, well--” The Hound tilts his head towards his dead companion and shrugs, not moving his eyes still. “Beric wasn’t so lucky this time. Managed to barricade ourselves in, but he died. Didn’t get back up.”

He sounds gruff, detached, like he’s telling someone else’s story, and Gendry figures it’s as close to grieving as the Hound can get.

“Where is she now?” The Hound blinks and doesn’t answer. “Did she go to get cleaned up?”

How long she must have waited, with nobody but the Hound and this dead man for company -- Gendry doesn’t envy her, and he faced death a dozen times over in the night. He thinks wistfully of the luxury of a warmed bed - not quite a bed, but close enough, good enough, the best -- and Arya against his side as he drifted off, both of them filthy and not quite caring enough to get cleaned up. Maybe he’ll get to feel something like that again.

The Hound’s looking at him. Strangely.

“She was talkin’ to _her_ when we were in there, and then … she vanished.” The Hound coughs drily, and shakes his head when Gendry offers him the small skin of water on his belt.

“Who did?”

“It’s odd, the she-wolf botherin’ to talk to her when she was on that list of hers.” The Hound lets out a real laugh, a harsh sound. “But who hasn’t been at some point?” He squints at Gendry and barks another laugh. “I guess you wouldn’t be. That woman was only on that list to begin with for what she did to ye. Same with this poor bastard.” The Hound waves a hand at Beric without looking, and Gendry tries not to let his confusion turn into rage.

“ _Who_? Which woman?”

“Which? _The_ witch.” The Hound spits on the shattered stones beside him. “The Red Woman.”

Gendry loses the feeling in his fingertips at the thought of her, remembering the feeling of being tied down, of being naked and exposed and afraid for his life (and he’s thought of it as _rape,_ but only quietly, to himself, deep where no one could hear or mock him for it, but he thinks out of anyone he knows, Arya wouldn’t make fun, she’d listen, and she’d probably sharpen her dagger for an hour afterward, but that only makes the fondness burn hot like an ember inside of him), but he fights past the revulsion.

“And where is she now? Arya, not the witch.”

“Godswood.” And the world falls away from underneath him. “The Red Woman said two words to her and the little wolf took off runnin’ like the devils themselves were at her heels.”

“No.” The word leaves him in a punched-out breath, and Gendry’s running before he’s even finished processing what Clegane said.

“Hey!” The Hound shouts at his back. “Oh, never mind. Fuckin’ typical.”

 _They’ll use Bran to drag out the Night King,_ Arya had whispered to him in the dark, tracing a line on his arm that had made him shiver hours later for thinking of it. _In the Godswood. It’s risky, but Jon will be there to save him. The pack survives._ She had shook her head and rolled over onto her back, which gave him an excuse to kiss her bare shoulder and hide his face and the storm that was probably written on it.

 _Won’t all the walkers go there?_ He’d mumbled into her skin, drowsy and sated from coming so hard it felt like he’d blacked out.

 _Yes._ Arya hadn’t looked over, just grown slightly stiffer under his kiss, and he’d frozen, sure he’d messed up. _My idiot brother seems to think he’ll be able to stop the Night King. Jon’s stupid like that._

 _Some would say noble,_ Gendry had teased her, and she’d managed a half-smile.

 _I still say stupid._ She’d given him a look of utter panic before her face stilled again. _Don’t be stupid tomorrow, Gendry. Promise me._

_I won’t if you won’t._

In the present, he sprints for the Godswood, clutching at his side, tearing down halls and past semi-familiar faces, one name and one name only on his mind, on his tongue. When he bursts into the clearing where the tree waits, he sees a lone figure on the blood-stained snow.

There are guards, but he pushes past them - one he recognizes from the mess, and he signals to the other to let Gendry go - and rushes towards the youngest living Stark.

“Lord Stark!” He bellows, clutching at his side, feet slipping in a pool of blood he refuses to look at.   _“Lord Stark_!” At first, he thinks the boy is asleep, but he sees that his eyes are open as he draws nearer, open and the color the snow should be, and not the color the snow currently is, and Gendry can’t think about that.

“Bran?” His voice cracks on the word.

Nothing.

He shakes his head and turns, his stomach turning over and over at the pool of blood seeping into the ground. In the middle of the pool lies a very familiar dagger. Gendry stumbles forward and kneels, collecting it, the blood staining his fingers.

The guard Gendry recognizes sees his face as he stands shakily and clears his throat.

“They’ll be burning the bodies soon.”

“What?” The world is frozen around him. Winter really came, then. This is winter. Gendry blinks errant snowflakes out of his eyes, the pesky bits melting - he doesn’t think about the fact that it hasn’t snowed since daybreak - and squints at the guard. “What did you say?”

“They’ll be burning the bodies soon,” the other guard repeats, and the first one nudges him and gives Gendry a sympathetic look.

“They need to burn the bodies. The Night King died, but we’re not takin’ any chances, says Lord Snow.”

“Arya.” Gendry feels the dread consume him, drowning him in ice.

Without another word, Gendry runs as hard as he can, through the guards and through the gate, sprinting across the grounds.

“ _Arya?_ ”

People stop and stare at him, and he knocks more than a few out of the way, his shitty boots sliding on the ground. Gendry runs like he never has before for the front of the keep, screaming his head off for Arya, and when he loses his breath, he just huffs - “ _Arry--_ ”

His feet stumble, falter, at what he sees.

There’s piles of bodies, lined up in what passes for rows; he gags at how much death there is. He hates this. He hates it. He hates all of it -- He’d rather be on that rowboat again, waiting for his own death, than to be seeing it in front of him like this.

A dragon is at rest, not even a hundred feet from him, and he can’t even balk at it because _where the fuck is Arya_ , and he’s moving again, stumbling, but he sees - gods, he _hears_ -

Jon Snow, sobbing. He didn’t know Jon could cry, but here he is, sobbing, deep, wracking sobs, his arms clutched around Sansa. For a wild second, he thinks the Dragon Queen is dead, the one Jon loves so much, the one he forsook his seat as King in the North for, but then he sees her silver hair up on the dragon - she looks resigned but grieved.

Sansa’s crying too, her arms around Jon’s neck, her face pressed into his shoulder as she shakes and cries, for once, shorter than Jon.

There’s only one reason the two most formidable people he knows would be so upset, and he remembers the blood spilled on the ground in front of Bran, the horrible pool of blood that a dagger lay in, and he thinks about every _stupid_ thing he knows about Arya Stark.

_Don’t be stupid. Promise me._

She promised.

Arya Stark can’t be gone. She’s the most alive person he ever met, and she was alive hours ago, her skin warm and muscles jumping under his palms as he ran them over her lithe body, kissed the parts she showed him, tucked away questions over the parts she wouldn’t, and he wants to reset the night, take her place, run to the Godswood for her, and she can’t be - she just can’t be -

 _Not Arya, not milady, not_ \--

He’s near enough to Jon that he can hear him say “ _Dracarys._ ” The spell is broken when the dragon breathes fire, consuming the pile of bodies.

“No!” Gendry screams, remembering his voice. He runs forward, his feet tripping over themselves in his haste. “No, _stop_ , please - please!”

Jon turns, startled, his eyes red, cheeks soaked with tears that have yet to freeze.

“We have to bury her,” Gendry sobs, rushing forward. A guard shouts in alarm and catches him, even as the dragon’s fire continues. “P-p- _please,_ let me say goodbye, she - I need to say goodbye.”

It’s the least dignified he can ever remember being, and he hasn’t had much chance at dignity in his life.

“She’s your sister,” he screams at Jon, who’s come to hold him back, clearly sensing the exhausted guard who was clutching him before isn’t up to the task. “She’s your fucking sister, bury her _separate,_ we should - we need to say goodbye--”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Jon snaps, face whiter than his name, and Gendry almost freezes at the epithet in Jon’s typically unshakable voice. “What in the gods’ names are you on about, Gendry?”

The fire’s heat has reached them now, but Jon doesn’t even blink as the tongues lick out towards them.

“Arry - _Arya,_ ” Gendry pants, almost collapsing to his knees. “Oh gods--”

“Gendry?”

He looks up, Jon’s arms still the only thing keeping him from meeting with the ground, and he really does need Jon to hold him up now because _Arya is here._

And she’s staring at him like he’s gone totally mad.

“You’re alive.” He whispers the words with utmost reverence, a feeling he’s never been able to capture in his life.

“Obviously.”

Arya’s standing still, her lip slightly curled in bemusement, eyebrows lifted towards her hairline, and her hair is down, he can’t ever remember seeing her hair down when it’s been long enough to count, and there’s bruises on her face and what he can see of her neck, but she’s _alive._

He takes a step forward and another, the heat of the dragonfire at his back, but the only thing in the world that exists is Arya Stark.

“You look like shit,” she snorts, eyeing his ragged appearance with a smirk. “Honestly, the fight ended two hours ago, you could have at least wiped your face --”

“You’re alive,” he repeats, more for himself than for her, and something, some impossible thing, softens in her face even as he cradles it in his hands.

“I’m alive,” she agrees, nodding as she looks up at him, the fire casting flickering shadows on her lovely, sharp features.

He runs his thumb over the cut on her forehead, hissing in pain for her when she makes no sound, and she’s looking up at him in nothing short of relief.

“And you’re alive,” she notes with a nod. “That’s good. I would have brought you back to life myself to kick your ass otherw--”

Gendry kisses her, without thought or caution, and she smacks his arm; a second later, she grips it, and then cups the back of his neck with her other, warm hand. Gendry holds her waist carefully, but as firmly as he dares, not knowing how she’s wounded, knowing that she won’t show any hint of wound until he drags her inside and helps her take off these ridiculous furs and sees with his own eyes what the battle has done to his lady.

Arya kisses even more sharp than she had last night, her teeth worrying into his bottom lip as she surges up on her toes, and Gendry smiles into it, but he stops smiling a second later when he hears a very familiar voice roar his name:

“That’s my sister!” Jon Snow, King in the North, does not sound happy in the least, but when Gendry tries to pull away, Arya makes a noise like an angry cat and pulls him back in, and who is he to fight the strongest of the Starks?

“You have no room to talk,” Sansa mutters, just barely audible over the crackle of dragonfire, and then he and Arya are laughing, sweet and gentle into the kiss, still laughing when they break apart to rest their foreheads against each other - _she’s alive,_ he thinks, rejoices, _she’s alive_ \- and when he finally looks up to see how much Jon wants to murder him, the surly crow is smiling and blushing, avoiding Sansa’s gaze.

“I should have come to Winterfell a long time ago,” Gendry admits to Arya. It’s not the first time he’s admitted that regret to her; it won’t be the last.

“Well, you’re home now,” Arya counters. “You should see it when it’s not on fire.”

He laughs and kisses her again, because he can, because he wants to, and every moment of it reminds him that they’re alive, they’re alive and together at Winterfell, like she wanted all along.

**Author's Note:**

> <3 
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you for reading (and who knows, maybe I'll be back with _actual_ fluff next time? If there's a next time?)


End file.
